Mistakes have been made.

Klepsacovic has a blog post today on miscommunication online. It’s a paper that was written a few years ago and it’s long. But the upshot is that if you’re trying to get a serious message across, irony and sarcasm are not so good. Regular readers to my blog will know that this is something that I do all the time, as are the emotional rants. It is my shtick, as you say. But it is extremely unrealistic of me to expect a first time reader to my blog to get that message, particularly on a subject such as representation in gaming, as opposed to lets say talking about the Defias messanger’s lunch box.

So I fucked up. I wrote an emotionally charged post on an emotional subject and all hell broke loose. And because of my writing style I was misunderstood. These are my mistakes. The best thing you can do in life is to learn from your mistakes, so in the future when commenting on a serious subject I will try to keep my language crisp and clear.

Mistakes have been made on the other side also. I think that my original intentions have been made quite transperent by now. I only ask that we leave the misinterpretation behind so as to move forward.

A lot of people have commented that they are sick of this argument, and I respect that. No more flogging a dead horse on pedantics. But to be honest, not a lot of bloggers are updating much at the moment. You either talk about Cataclysm, (which is like trying to talk about a future piece of bread whilst watching the baker kneed the dough), or you talk about your suana in your hotel room on your holiday. I think that this topic of representation in the gaming world is important, and this is the moment to talk about subjects like this. Come cataclysm we know where the discussion will be. Spinks has a very interesting post today on women in gaming which I have commented on, I encourage you to check it out.

I also ask people commenting on this blog to try and keep it on topic. If somebody arrives that has a different argument, state your objection to it and why and leave it at that. If somebody is obviously trolling, just let it go and trust me, I will deal with it. No matter which side of the fence you sit, being emotionally overblown is self-inhibiting, and casts you in a bad light to people sitting in the middle.

Even after you clarified you were still targeted because you are/were an easy target.
A few weeks ago Gelvon proposed a topic ‘Blood Elf Porn’ to another blogger. We know this was a purely challenge/poke fun thing and yet I would have thought the subject matter vastly more offensive than your comments.
Now what made you an target? You listened to the their arguement. Bad rogue.
Only you are in the position of knowing whether they were right or wrong. Were they – Yes or No? Simple

I find your apologetic behavior really disturbing. Western Europe confronts itself at the moment with the new age philosophy of political correctness which does a very good work at supressing any kind of personal opinion and feeling from the public view for fear of repercussions.

I call bullshit and more you defend yourself and try to reason your way out of that original post, more I am losing respect for your blog.

Fact of the matter is, your opinion, no matter how biased, emotional or subjectively wrong should stand. Misunderstandings should be treated by editing the master post…

And I don’t believe you were “misunderstood”. Actually I think everyone fucking understood whatever the hell they wanted to understand so that they can slam you with their “political correctness hammer”.

Look around… it’s happening everywhere. In the US you can’t even say “Black” anymore (for fear of being misunderstood) – we’ve invented “African American” to clear up any “misunderstandings” (which semantically is bullshit because those people have absolutely no connection with Africa what-so-ever).

Same thing in Western Europe with Jews, Arabs or whatever other freaking group which decides all of a sudden that they are being discriminated against.

It’s a battle that will hurt everyone, and it all starts with an apology for some words that were “misunderstood”…

Very good points, and I agree with you on some of them. But the fact of the matter is that I did knock that original post up in about 10 minutes and hit the enter key. And there were repurcussions that I could never have forseen. It’s not about losing my personal voice. It’s about understanding how best to write in this medium. Another example was my post about the shadow priest who went nuts when forced to concentrate on the orbs in the VoA raid. People went nuts about what part of that post? – the part where we set down the loot rules, something I just didn’t forsee at the time when I wrote it.

Something that I will not do is go back and edit the original post, as it would make so many comments and other blog posts reduntant. It would be easy, very easy for me to protect myself in that way, but I’m not buying into it. I stand by what I wrote, it is still there in its orginal form. I have not changed my opinion by any stretch of the imagination. I merely wished to point out that certain criticisms of my post were valid, and that in the future I will be brutally clear when setting out my views. Some people may look at todays post as an admission of defeat. They would be extremely misguided and unwise to do so, however. I will continue to fight the good fight, but from now on I will be so clear in my meaning that my adverseries will either have to deal directly with my argument, (instead of hiding behind convienent pedantic nitpicking), or shut up entirely. Thus, I believe that this entire episode has only made me stronger and more effective.

I wont argue against clear communication which is clearly needed, however the problem is explicitly with your first phrase (“misogynist asshole”). The fact that he (Adam and whatever his last name is) is a misogynist or not is completely irrelevant to the post in itself.

I don’t care what and how he is. I only care about the argument presented, but most people twist the meaning of the words into a judgement upon the person writing it and the counterarguments transform from the expected responses to the text into ad-hominem attacks.

If I write the same piece of text twice, in the first using the term “Black” and in the second “African American”, I can bet that for the first one I will be bashed as being a racist while the second will be perceived neutral.

Okrane – Black hasn’t changed that much. It’s just become a convention for some to use that term. Personally I’ve always used black and will continue to do so mainly because calling someone an african briton almost sounds like you’re singling someone out. I don’t expect someone to call me scottish british. The only term I’ve ever heard a black person complain about it was my friend Rich who does it all the time to overly PC people because he’s a wanker and it gives him a kick.

I say this, my writing style is a shoot from the hip style. I just write off the top of my head, and not much planning involved.

When you shoot from the hip, sometimes you miss your mark.

If I understood Adam correctly, his original post was like that. It missed his mark, he was misunderstood. He tried to clarify, but the more he clarified things, the more things got personal, and heated.

I’ve been there, done that. It takes a big person to admit when they were wrong, when they are wrong. Good show old man.

I’ve largely wanted to stay neutral on this subject, and I will continue to do so. However I will mention that one of the key sentences which kept being thrown in your face had some of the most difficult to parse English I’ve read on any quality blog. By all means be forthright and passionate on a subject, hell be deliberately inflammatory if that’s how you want to get your point across, but you have to make absolutely sure that there is no possibility of misinterpretation because of mistakes on your end. This is especially true when treading into the quagmire of gender politics, where people on both sides will be eager to ‘read between the lines’ in order to bin you in a particular camp.

Do you remember “The life of Brian” famous Monty Python film, I’m sure you do ?

In certain parts of the world, including the UK where most of the writers and stars originated, there were leaflets handed out at cinemas condemning the film as blasphemous. In other places the film was banned.

If it can happen to the likes of Cleese, Gilliam, Palin, Chapman, Idle and Jones you’re in good company Adam.

The sarcasm, irony and rants contribute greatly to the why I read your blog in the first place. The blogsphere is better off with – rather than without them.

I think there were a fair number of posters who saw what they wanted to see in your comments whether it was actually there or not. It gave them something else to write about rather than sit and wait for the next Cataclysm rumours.

Life would be a lot more dull if we all agreed with each other all the time.

I hope your ‘shtick’ continues unabashed for it all.

@ Chewy – That film is even now still banned in Glasgow. Surely after 30 odd years some one can explain to the puritans on our fair city council what irony is. Then again, I guess not.

When someone hears an audible sound and LIKE what they hear, they call it music, or a tune. Or some other *positive* word.

When they don’t like what they hear, how do they refer to it? What verb do they asign to the communicative interruption to their lives? That’s right… NOISE.

I think the title of this blog sets the tone nicely for the content found within, don’t you? The “Pink Pigtail Inn” uses the word Inn to convey a sense of polite, respectful comfort and pleasent tavern musings… but if you visit “The Noisy Rogue” and have your monacle popped off your face by the no-holds-barred opinions of the titular rogue in question, you have no-one to blame but yourself.🙂

One might even dare to say it would be akin to playing a D&D fantasy game and being shocked and offended by the presence of the odd chain mail bikini.

An admonition of guilt, and then doing wrong anyway, would not get him any more credibility. I think it would also prime others to disregard or downplay the actual point he may be trying to convey “Oh, he’s got a disclaimer.” I know I probably would.

There are ways to include humour in his writing that first time readers can more easily pick up without having to decipher if he means it the comments at face value or not.